As was discussed in copending Application Ser. No. 263,453 entitled Stress Testing Equipment With An Integral Cooling Plenum by one of the inventors of the instant invention and assigned to the same assignee as the instant invention, and incorporated herein by reference, in stress testing electronic components in a high temperature environment, inasmuch as prior to the invention disclosed in the copending Application, connectors for mating a driver board and a carrier board are positioned either within, or adjacent to, the high temperature oven, metal fatigue of the contacts and degradation of the connector bodies oftentimes result. This in turn results in inaccurate measurements.
In the copending Application, it was disclosed that by using a moderate temperature section (an integral cooling plenum) and by extending the carrier card into the moderate temperature section, with the connectors being built into the interface junction between the moderate temperature section and an ambient temperature section, the connectors are protected from the heat in the high temperature oven. Moreover, to insure that no heat would escape from the high temperature oven into the moderate temperature section, a sealer gasket is placed at the junction of the high temperature oven and the moderate temperature section. Also, by means of cool air circulating within the moderate temperature section, any heat that may be produced by convection is carried away, so that only a moderate temperature, in the form of a temperature gradient, exists in the moderate temperature section.
The device of the copending Application works well, as long as there is an integral cooling planum in the device. Oftentimes, however, such cooling planum are not feasible, or indeed, are not desirable. In such situations, it then becomes imperative that a different kind of apparatus be used which would both allow the stress testing of electronic components and insure that the connectors, if any, connecting a driver board to a carrier board would not be exposed to a high temperature environment.